In recent years, enhancement of fuel economy of the automobile has become an important issue from the viewpoint of global environmental conservation. Consequently, there is an active movement afoot to reduce the thickness of car body materials through increases in strength thereof and enhance fuel economy through weight reduction of a car body itself. A steel sheet formed into a product, e.g., an automotive part, by pressing or bending is required to have formability capable of bearing the forming while high strength is maintained. In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 1-259120, a high Mn steel achieves high strength and ductility by intercritical annealing. In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-138345, a high Mn steel is hot rolled, the microstructure after hot rolling is a bainite•martensite microstructure, then a multiphase microstructure is established by annealing and tempering where fine retained austenite is formed and, furthermore, tempered bainite and tempered martensite are contained, so that local ductility is improved.
However, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 1-259120 above, no study has been made on improvements in formability due to concentration of Mn, and there is room for improvement in formability. In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-138345, the microstructure contains a large proportion of bainite•martensite tempered at a high temperature and, therefore, has less-than-sufficient strength. In addition, the amount of retained austenite is limited to improve local ductility and, thereby, the total elongation is also insufficient.
It could therefore be helpful to provide a method of manufacturing a high strength steel sheet having excellent formability suitable for application to automotive parts use, where the tensile strength (TS) is 980 MPa or more and the total elongation (EL) is 25% or more.